I’ve never had the temperament to truly understand betrayal. Only to know its pain.

—Jii’Hssen Ssyii Ssyri’Jiilits

Huddled together, we floated with arms and tails held together against a frigid void. A pressure mounted, a presence I knew all too well loomed, and then…

A light.

And another.

Ssiina and Kyrae mumbled, and familiar glowing sigils blinked to life in the darkness. Protection, warmth, focus, and more. Dissolving after flashes of brilliance, more and more joined as the lights merged, struggling. The presence shifted, lessened but not gone.

I felt Kyrae’s arms around my waist tighten, and I gripped Ssiina’s hand, holding on for dear life just as she was. Beyond the light, our bodies were indistinct, but I felt five of us. More than that, I felt myself going through the practiced exercises, pulling bits and pieces of the endless void’s shadow under my control.

It was a raindrop in a hurricane, but I clung to it. Pushed back against the darkness. Lungs burned until I took a breath of nothing. My head started to swim, and my sisters started to slow, hissing out words as the dark crept back in, fuzzy now at the edges.

Those bits of shadow were the only reason I saw the attack coming: a shift in the void, of motion and purpose and malice coalescing into a me-sized bludgeon. I shouted, spitting precious air soundlessly into the void, and my shadows pulled around us like a bubble. Frigid force slammed into us, sending us careening through the void. Shadows under someone else’s control soaked through, dissolving what little I protection I’d given us.

From Kyrae and Ssiina, strings of sigils flickered, then merged. Even as my ward collapsed, they formed one rotating ring, then another, then another. Sigil after sigil overlaid and overlapping. The magic burned at me, burned at the void, blinding us to the outside nothing—wherever and whoever the source of the attack was.

We were slammed again, and in the brightness I caught Kyrae’s eyes. She was focused, but straining. And I knew my presence here, and my connection to the void outside, was draining her and Ssiina. With us, Ussen Nistala whimpered, and the ussent Ssiina had been with had his head on a swivel, eyes wide and jittery. Ssiina wore a mask of focus, but her whole body was shaking.

Their sigil construct would only buy us time, and if I stayed here, it wouldn’t buy us much at all.

I pushed against what my sisters were desperately trying to maintain, and I knew they understood. Resistance gave way, and I slipped through a dark gap, flowing into the void like oil over water. Behind me, the light snapped shut, an egg of myriad symbols floating as a sole light in the infinite darkness.

“I knew it!” The voice was familiar, but pitched up to the verge of cracking—manic.

I spun, following the echo until I saw a disturbance in the darkness. From it, nearly invisible tendrils swung out, battering the construct I’d just left. I didn’t waste any time flying toward our attacker.

Here, in this space that held me prisoner in my dreams, the infinite darkness seemed eager. Like opening a door, I let it in, and crossing a distance greater than Phaeliisthia’s courtyard was suddenly trivialized. As I moved, I gathered power, forming a shell around myself until all I could see through was a hole the size of my fist. My lungs cooled, and my mind gained a sharp-edged clarity.

The blob of darkness moved, turning aside from my charge at the last moment. I sped past, out of control, a mocking laugh echoing after me.

“A failure? Pah! Can you feel it?” The darkness parted, and Ussen Anqi Ziilant’s shadow-wreathed form slid out, her brown eyes wide and her braided hair floating behind her.

Scythes of darkness erupted from the mass around her, and I struggled to dodge. At the same time, I felt closer to my power that I ever had, and it only took a thought to fire back at her, dozens of shadow tendrils flowing out of me to grasp at her.

Her blades cut at my tendrils, but I felt some strike home, knocking Ussen Anqi sideways. Instead of a hiss of pain, she laughed, fangs extended and venom beading at their tips. “I’ll bet you can feel so much more in this place.”

What? I couldn’t count the blades that erupted from her. Not just the shadows, but her. My own armor was cut away, and a dozen cuts opened down my length. I gritted my teeth in pain, lashing out again.

“How?” Ussen Anqi almost seemed to answer, even as she twirled away from my panicked assault. Blades retreated into tendrils that wrapped around the wild-eyed ussen; they flowed out from under gold-brown scales and from her back like twisted wings. “How did such a connection form?”

I need to get close. I pushed myself forward with what was left of my shadow, feeling it form into a familiar blade in my hands. Staying low, I aimed for a feint into a slash.

Even as I sped toward her, Ussen Anqi’s eyes bored into mine; she felt like she was talking at me, not to me. “The idol wasn’t special… no.”

I went for the feint.

A wall of darkness slammed me back, sending me tumbling away. Bits of my shadow turned traitor, joining the mass under the ussen’s control.

She swept her arms to her sides, and the tendrils burst into immense, spiked wings that dwarfed her body even as they wrapped it. I braced, but instead of an attack, she spoke, again seemingly to herself.. “Did she stop just before—why?”

“What are you saying? What happened to me?” I thought I’d whispered, but my voice was shockingly loud in the stillness. Around me, I tried to gather more from the void; the shadow was soothingly cold as it pressed into the cuts along my length.

All I got in reply was a spine-chilling, lilting laugh; all composure was gone from the dangerous, cunning woman I thought her to be. Her wings unfurled fully as she cackled, exposing her real body.

Ussen Anqi opened her mouth to speak again, but I shot forward, fangs out and hands gripping around a knife I shouldn’t have had. She moved again; my fangs bit down on nothing and my blade slid through thick shadow. Tendrils peeled off her skin and battered my back and my lower body. Her wings wrapped around me, pulling me in and slicing deep through my scales.

Hissing, I twisted and writhed, cutting and biting even as I felt blades of shadow cutting into my bones. Cold filled my mouth, my fangs envenomed nothing, and I suddenly felt like I had no air in me.

The wings and tendrils stopped. “Perhaps not?” Narrowed eyes floated in front of me, pupils so large they nearly obscured the irises. They widened. “You’re not—”

I bit her face.

One fang went into her cheek, grazing bone, and the other her eye, filling my mouth with a rush of fluid. I gagged and Ussen Anqi shrieked. Hardly any venom pulsed out, and I pulled back reflexively.

Ussen Anqi’s shadow wings spasmed, falling apart into a mass of tendrils. Some went still, and others… turned. They oozed out of me for her, wrapping around the ussen so tightly that I heard bones crack.

“No! I am your master—you’re nothing but—”

A tendril cut her off, slamming her jaw shut so hard I heard another crack. Around me, I felt my shadows again, pushing my wounds closed, holding in my blood and numbing away the worst of the pain.

But I also felt a familiar, terrible presence.

We’ve been noticed.

To one side, my sisters and their light were far away. The numbing cold was so inviting, and I was tired.

This is all her fault.

I remembered dying in a gutter. The cold and this void that’d nearly taken me.

Without looking back, I slithered—flew—swam—whatever. I moved as quickly as I could toward my sisters, tail burning with effort and agony both. Behind me, the presence loomed large, closing in. The sound of Ussen Anqi’s struggles ceased in an instant as it met her.

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I kept moving. The light kept moving away.

Slowly, I was gaining, but I couldn’t outrace the presence behind me. Already, my tail was numb and my shadows alone were pushing my lower body as I felt one heart grow still. My lungs burned, and my shadows started to feel distant.

I’m losing control.

Please…

I felt a trickle of warmth. The presence slowed, and I began to pull away. My own shadows recoiled and rebelled as a burst of golden, familiar light blinded me. I felt like I was falling upward, and the void cracked around me like misfired pottery.

Light streamed in, and with a shattering sound that deafened me, the void evaporated. I fell up out of the grand hall’s floor with enough force that I nearly hit the ceiling. Or the ceiling nearly hit me.

A chunk of stone, falling down around the form of the massive serpent dragon that had crashed through the Emerald Palace’s roof. Ringing hammered my ears and I brought an arm up as if to shield myself. A wave of darkness followed the motion, knocking the chunk aside.

The motion felt fluid and instinctual—and strong. Immediately, the golden light suffusing the room burned away at my shadows. Feeling like I was on fire, I shrieked and rolled, narrowly missing my unmoving sisters and spilling blood across the floor. The chunk of ceiling crashed against the wall, but the sound was distant to my ringing ears.

The golden light’s burning heat turned into a soothing warmth, and my stopped heart started again as I felt wounds partially closing. Next to me, my sisters and the others who’d been with us started to rouse. I tried to slither over to them, but shouting drew my attention—even if I couldn’t catch the words.

I whipped around, and I saw the horror that the grand hall had turned into. Guests were strewn about, collapsed as if in slumber, and rubble lined the edges of the room. Above, Phaeliisthia’s true form dominated. Beyond, stars twinkled in the early night.

My former tutor’s voice boomed out across the space in response to the shout, but all I caught was Jaezotl. I felt Phaeliisthia’s words, however, and the burning intensified. The last of my shadows fled and a bone-deep fatigue grew under the increasing warmth.

In the middle of the room, by the ramp we’d descended so recently and in a clearing void of rubble, Sire, Aunt Ssyii, Hssen Zaiia, and a dark mass clashed in the center. Nearby, Ussen Andriel Sunstrike struggled to stand; around him, other battered figures I, some of whom I recognized, lay twitching—or still. The elf reached forward, toward the swirling sigils that cluttered the air around the fight, and recoiled.

Immediately, I pushed myself forward, hands bouncing off the ruined floor as my lower body failed to push the upper one upright. I tried to reach the circle, but before I even got to it, I felt its magic repelling me.

I stopped, hissing, and pulled myself upright. In the circle, to my surprise, Zaiia stood with her sisters, Sire Tyaniis in the center. Their clothes were slashed and the air shimmered with the intensity of their magic. The dark mass surged, tendrils splitting off it even as multitudinous shards sprayed forward. In the center, I glimpsed a figure within, and a familiar pair of eyes glowing with empty malice: Ussen Ezyna Ssyt.

The sisters repelled the attack, sigils shattering as they were driven back.

I tried for the barrier again, but I couldn’t get my hand within arm’s length of it. With Phaeliisthia’s magic rushing through me, the light didn’t burn, so I tried throwing myself against it. A masculine voice cried out, but I ignored it. The world tilted and pain exploded down my length.

My vision whited out; I blinked and found myself sprawled on the floor even further away than where I’d started.

“...need to flee,” that same melodic voice belonged to the arms pulling my upper body out from under a loop of my lower.

I looked up into the eyes of Ussent Andriel. His face had a jagged cut across the side—recently healed and still pink—and his clothes were a mess.

I shook my head and pushed away from him, slithering back to where my sire and aunt were fighting.

“You can’t!” the ussent shouted.

He didn’t need to. I didn’t reach the barrier. Like a fire fed by wind, black, shimmering shadow flared up in a ring around the combatants. From above, Phaeliisthia roared, and her magic’s pressure drove me to the ground.

The dark mass that was Ussen Ezyna staggered, and two figures rushed forward. The third, Hssen Zaiia, held back and reared up.

I could only watch as from within my sire’s shield of magic a shining blade plunged toward her back.

***

Dyni swayed as she slithered down the corridor. The Emerald Palace was under siege; black-robed figures seemed appear out of thin air and the royal taaniir had nearly been overwhelmed. Utaan Lyantii was somewhere—hopefully—herding an evacuation and slaying who she could. Dyni’d been assigned to cover the entrances her and her mistress had deemed the most likely for any would-be assassins.

Already she’d killed ten.

They hadn’t expected this—no one had. To come into one of the two hearts of Jaezotl’s power in Ess’Sylantziis would take more than an army. Or it would take extraordinary strength.

The assassins had magic she hadn’t seen since a terrible night more than a decade past. Her blades sang with golden magic—gifts she’d nearly turned down. The assassin-turned-bodyguard worried for Lissti and Kyen, as even the servants she’d passed hadn’t been spared, lying pallid and still with ice clouding their eyes.

But she had her priorities, and Hinssa’s dead eyes wouldn’t leave her mind’s eye. She’d failed one mistress—the one who was the reason she’d dared to continue living. She wouldn’t fail again.

Rounding the last corner, two shadow-cloaked figures blocked the way forward, standing at the end of the corridor before the doors to the grand hall. The unnatural chill they carried had already given them away and Dyni slithered low under the blades of shadow from one. Rolling to the side, she dodged the other who came forward at her.

She turned, spinning her weight with an agility few lamia possessed, and brought one blade down. It met shadow, then punched through into flesh. The other she threw out, letting a length of the chain that attached it to her arm unspool.

Golden magic met shadows, slicing the next volley of shadow blades into dissipating mist.

The assassin rolled under her, trying to wrap their tail around Dyni’s. Arcing her arm, she brought the second dagger down like a bola even as she blocked with the other, bright light banishing the shadows.

Her assailant didn’t so much as hiss, and their cold bit painfully into Dyni’s scales. In her peripheral vision, she saw the next attack coming: a veritable wave of ooze-like shadow. She twisted and shifted, interposing her assailant in front of the blast. But the other lamia was bigger, and Dyni didn’t get her lower body out of the way.

Cold so intense that it burned made the bodyguard’s vision flash white. Her lower body locked up, numb and unresponsive. She and the shadow-cloaked assassin rolled together across the smooth stone of the corridor, slamming into the wall, bigger lamia first.

Teeth gritted together and fangs extended, Dyni reeled one dagger in and brought the pair across her assailant’s neck. The first was blocked, but the second found home, spraying too-cold blood over both of them.

Dyni tried to push away from the limp and dying assassin, but she couldn’t feel anything below her chest. Looking up, she saw pricks of pale light within the shadows of the other assassin who was closing the distance, four blades of shadow extending from where arms should be.

In a sprint, their head was forward, swaying side-to side with the motion of their tail. Dyni turned, coiling up as much of her spine as she could, glancing and timing and praying to Jaezotl that her muscles would remember her training.

She spun, tucking one dagger away and under her as she threw the other. It flew forward, tethered by a golden chain. The assailant’s head moved left, and a blade swept forward to bat the dagger aside.

Golden sigils erupted down the dagger’s length, whirling around the handle, and it pierced through. The assailant’s head moved left, and the motion saw the dagger’s blade slip easily into one pale eye. Shadows exploded outward and the body slumped. Momentum carried it forward, so close that Dyni could reach forward and grab the thrown blade from the dead assassin’s eye socket.

Without shadows, the two looked like regular lamia, albeit without the heat their bodies should have. Wrapped up as she was with a corpse, Dyni struggled to get free.

A crash shook the palace, enough that the wall behind Dyni cracked. For a moment, she thought it was the Emerald Palace collapsing—perhaps under some vile sigilcraft.

It didn’t, and she was now loose enough to get free. Her lower body, however, was still nearly dead weight, Where she’d been hit, her scales were shattered and blood oozed out from blackened, cracked skin. The hit was near her tail, just below any vital organs. She’d probably live, but Dyni would rather die if she wasn’t able to save Mistress Tyaniis and her daughters.

Feeling like her numb half was full of splinters, Dyni pushed herself up, kept low, and slithered as fast as she could for the doors. She threw them open and the sight within gave even the singularly-driven bodyguard pause.

The roof of the grand hall had been shattered, leaving stars to illuminate what braziers had done only moments ago. Bodies, some moving, lay strewn about the floor—though it didn’t look like the bloody aftermath of a disaster. Rather, it looked like everyone had suddenly collapsed wherever they’d coiled. In the center of it all, a massive four-winged serpent dragon hovered, surrounded by a sigil array so dense it made Dyni’s head hurt just looking at it.

Phaeliisthia. She’d read enough of the Palace’s library to know who this was—and to know that this meant. She’s broken a thousand-year treaty.

She didn’t let the implications, or the grand-hall-sized dragon hold her attention for long, however. Below, at the bottom of the ramp, in a circle of what looked like black flames, were her mistress, Jii’Hssen Ssyii, and Hssen Zaiia.

And a mass of darkness that surged forth like a sapient wave. Shadow crashed against magic, and Dyni saw the serpent dragon’s sigil constructs shift and flare to life. She braced, but her daggers seemed to resonate, and the pressure was hardly more than a firm hand on her shoulder.

Seizing the chance, Dyni fought through the pain, swaying and sliding down the ramp toward the fight. She was just in time to see Hssen Zaiia glance at Mistress. Just in time to see her blade shift targets as the other hssen held back and drove it forward in a killing blow.

Mind clear, purpose known, Dyni threw.

***

Hssen Zaiia’s arm thrust down. I cried out, but only managed a choked rasp. As the blade fell home, time seemed to slow. A lance of light seared across my vision like a bolt of skyfire and Hssen Zaiia screamed. Sire continued forward, blood spraying behind her.

My aunt who’d tried to kill my sire looked up, holding her handless, bleeding arm with the other, and her panicked, bright blue eyes found mine. I couldn’t tell what she was thinking, but what I saw didn’t look like fury. It looked like fear.

Not a moment later, Sire and Aunt Ssyii struck the dark mass. For a moment, their magic seemed to pierce through it, to reach Ussen Ezyna at its heart. A finger’s width shy, it stopped.

Ussen Ezyna roared. The sound was hollow and immense. Cold washed over the room, and a blanket of darkness blotted out the stars above.